Posted on October 01, 2009 by Luke

(Image CC soundfromwayout)

EDIT: Sigh – they’ve gone again. On 5 October 11 am GMT the total of UK students has fallen again to 212,000. We’ve reported this again to Facebook and await a response.

They didn’t know why they’d lost them but they’ll be happy to see them back.

The three million UK students that went missing from Facebook’s redeveloped Ad Manager platform in September have returned.

As midnight passed in the USA and 1 October arrived, Facebook adjusted its data to display a more accurate picture of how many university students it can target globally.

In the UK 3,169,820 university undergrads are now registered, compared 180,000 yesterday.

Facebook’s French-based student audience has increased from 2% of the country’s overall student cohort to over 50%.

Clearly a rule in Facebook’s ad system was discounting the majority of the student audience during September, though the company was unaware.

Advertisers will be happy that freshers-time campaigning can resume on what has become a valuable marketing channel for those targeting the youth demographic.